sunk costs vs. sustainability

[walkitout]

Of course, the sunk costs argument is an economists argument -- not an environmentalists argument. There's some serious energy wrapped up in an old vehicle (see the tail end of the previous post) -- or an old building.

This is a discussion of stored costs, er, energy vs sunk costs, er, energy in vehicles, primarily:

http://blogs.nimblebrain.net/index.php/2008/07/27/reuse_versus_replacement?blog=5

Which links to an article about the same issues in buildings. There are some issues in this article:

http://www.preservationnation.org/magazine/2008/january-february/cautionary-tale.html

Notably, commercial buildings from before 1920 are (a) mostly gone and (b) there aren't many of them compared to commercial buildings as a whole and (c) they've probably been modded. Repeatedly. But the idea that any given building, residential or commercial, is essentially stored energy, is a fascinating one.

While a building (or vehicle) which is destroyed after you are done with it is over and done with (altho the demo and removal costs should be accounted for reasonably, as should salvage from same) is over and done with, a building (or vehicle) which you sell to someone else goes on to have a life of its own. A certain number of people out there worry about selling their guzzler because they know they aren't putting many miles on it per year and fear the next person might do worse. I'm not convinced that's justified; I distinctly recall running across people who replaced an 8 mpg truck with a 16 mpg truck (or SUV or whatever); presumably the 16 mpg vehicle was replaced by a 20+ mpg vehicle and so on upstream. I, for one, don't think we need worry too much about encouraging the production of replacement vehicles for these folk (the terrible to merely bad mpg vehicles); the used market should be able to supply them adequately for a long time to come.

Comments

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

I think the fact that there is obviously a big demand for high-mpg used cars means that the problem is essentially taken care of: you can go ahead and buy that Prius if you want, because all the recycling of used cars IS BEING DONE, whether you personally are doing any of it or not.

Can't remember atm whether you've talked about car sharing programs (Zipcar and such).

car sharing programs

[walkitout]

This is definitely one area where price has clearly communicated to people what needs to be done -- at least, it's been clear to a lot of people. There are still some folk out there wanting to cut the gas tax, which, if everyone switches to higher mpg vehicles will need to be raised instead to maintain existing levels of service. There are even a few pressing for price controls, which probably aren't a great idea, altho there are some social justice arguments for price controls + rationing, or needs based subsidies or whatever. I am a little curious whether those arguments will at any point be made in this crisis/transition/wtf.

If I've mentioned Zipcar (is FlexCar still around? Did they get bought or something?), it was only in passing. Long Ago, when I was in college or shortly thereafter (so this would be sometime in the early '90s), I ran across an interesting woman who (and this was in Seattle) had given up her car because it was too expensive, but regularly rented cars (a couple times a month, sometimes one day a week) for certain kinds of errands. It turned out it was cheaper to do that than to own her own, by a good chunk. I knew about this kind of thing from "real" cities like NYC (at least in the past; apparently now everyone living in NYC owns SUVs. Go figure.) where people would rent a car to go down to New Jersey for a big shop.

For a while in the late 1990s, around the time I retired and before I took up dayhiking, I was consciously working to minimize car trips; I had that woman in mind and was contemplating FlexCar or similar later as a way to supplement. In the event, the dayhiking turned out to rack up a lot of miles (not to mention the years of road trips around the country not too long after) and I abandoned the idea.

When we left the Camry in NH and were only moving the WRX across country, the initial plan was to sign up with FlexCar to supplement. In the event, R. almost never took the car to work and I walked a lot of places anyway, especially after T. arrived and took such a strong disliking to going anywhere by car.

So my personal experience with car sharing programs amounts to a lot of admiration and interest, and no actual use. I'd be interested in hearing whether anyone else use(s)(d) them. I really liked that FlexCar at one point was advertising discounted rates for people using it to go on job interviews.

Re: car sharing programs

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

I think Zipcar and FlexCar are merging. The Seattle Times used to offer FlexCar as a benefit, which was quite nice for B. to get to dentist appointments or whatever, but that got dropped quickly when their ad revenue headed south.